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“Where have your Monday columns gone?” several people have asked me. Those posts that recounted the improbable adventures of the sexagenarians in a world just as improbable.
I acknowledged that I lacked the typical lightness of those kinds of writings… due to the spirit of the times, no doubt…
So, as I pick up my pen in this year, 2024, I can’t help but think of Orwell, the visionary who passed away on January 21, 1950, 74 years ago, and whose words resonate with troubling relevance: “Those who see evil and do not act are complicit.” This visionary fought tirelessly against the very extremisms that are rearing their heads today, reminding us that history only repeats itself. While some stride into 2024 with a confident step (or dance), others, more cautious, have perfectly understood that the path is heavily mined. Navigating these mines is as perilous as staying at home.
“Political speech is designed to give lies the accent of truth, to make murder respectable, and to create the appearance of solidarity in a mere breeze.” (Orwell) Yes, the scythe strikes. Blindly. Wherever one may be. When it doesn’t kill physically, it assassinates from within. A part of you is now definitely dead. The other has no choice but to submit.
“The crime of thinking does not lead to death.” Really? Was Orwell joking? When must one think a thousand times before speaking, writing, or surviving? Yes, times are hard for dreamers; those incorrigible idealists who have not yet understood that corruption reigns supreme. That the word, if not wielded like a sword, will be beheaded, ripped from its context, bleached, wrung out, and replaced, washed of its meaning and essence.
In this context, Orwell’s Animal Farm is no longer a fable, but a mirror held up to our society. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” These words echo our reality, where equality is a vague concept, manipulated by those at the top of the political and social pyramid.
It is astonishing to realize that no, we are not in 2024, but in 1984. A world where surveillance is omnipresent, where freedom is a carefully maintained illusion, and where history is a narrative in perpetual rewriting.
Orwell’s prophetic vision in his novel 1984 intrudes into our daily lives, reminding us of the fragility of our individual freedoms and the ease with which they can be usurped. Orwell’s concept of “Newspeak,” a language designed to limit freedom of expression and thought, finds a worrying echo in modern communication strategies. As Orwell so eloquently put it, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” This perverse inversion of truth has become a tool to manipulate the masses, to keep them in a state of submission and voluntary ignorance.
In these troubled times, it is our duty, as writers, thinkers, and citizens, to stay awake, to question and challenge what is presented to us as unshakable. For, as Orwell taught us, it is in our ability to think, to critique, and to dream that lies our greatest strength.
P.S.: I promise a more sustainable lightness of being for the next article.
